personal // a (late) happy birthday to Jamey!

This past weekend was Jamey's 24th birthday!! Woo hoo! We celebrated by having his parents come into town and by going to Kings Dominion! Jamey is very much "best friends" with his parents, so he was really excited that they were able to make the trip up. We started the weekend with an awesome dinner of trying out a couple of new recipes! (What better birthday present to Jamey than trying out new delicious things that I can cook for him again?! He loves it when I do this. A lot.) We then drove down to Kings Dominion the next morning (after he got his free Starbucks of course, from a worker who loved that he was a Hokie!). We could not have asked for more beautiful weather. It was perfect!  Jamey had so much fun and kept saying how great it was to be with all of us on his birthday.  Jamey and his dad loved riding the Intimidator 305 roller-coaster.  For those of you that don't know what this is, it is a roller coaster that takes you 305 feet up in the air and then drops you at an 85 degree angle. He was definitely intimidated at first, but once he rode it, he thought it was so awesome and just wanted to keep riding it! His mom and I girl-talked and waited for the boys because she's afraid of heights, and well, I didn't have a great experience with all of the g-forces hitting me when I had ridden it before. Dad ended up being the overall conqueror of the coaster, however! He rode it 5 times (which we have no idea how) and Jamey rode it 3.  After the park, we went to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner (where we made them give him a nice dose of birthday public embarrassment, duh) and then came back for cake and presents. The weekend went by so quickly, but we certainly had fun celebrating and having a weekend "off"!

church // best things about our trip to blacksburg and some [nlcf] love.

Us sharing at the 11am service. 

As we said in our last post, we were in Blacksburg, VA two weekends ago and it was such a refreshing weekend for us!  As every Hokie knows, there's just something about that town that makes you feel right at home and warms your heart no matter how long it's been since you've been there.  It was so great for us as it had been almost 6 months since we were there last! Here are a few lovable things about Blacksburg that we got to experience this weekend:


1.) the beautiful campus of Virginia Tech
2.) New Life Christian Fellowship [nlcf].  Period.
3.) that one-of-a-kind small town feel
4.) visiting wonderful friends and feeling like you're picking up right where you left off
5.) meeting a new tiny addition to our Blacksburg family
6.) shamlessly wearing so much Orange and Maroon
7.) the joyous feeling you get when you see Exit 118B
8.) overlooking the amount of people in Gillie's to enjoy the best breakfast in town (even if it is vegetarian)
9.) breathing in a crisp, cool spring morning in the mountains
10.) the feeling you get when walking by places that mean a lot to you personally

Friends and staff praying over us during the 707 service. 

During the trip, we also were given the opportunity to speak at our sending church, New Life Christian Fellowship [nlcf].  It was great to get to share how Lesley and I's desire to enter into international missions started separately before we even met and how they have now blended as our vision together. We enjoyed being able to share with the congregation how [nlcf] is involved in our ministry and how our time at [nlcf] allowed us to grow tremendously in our faith and relationship with Jesus.  I also encouraged them to to go on one of [nlcf]'s missions trips.  I have never seen anyone come back from one of them and not be changed in some way.  I think God does incredible things in people's hearts when they go on mission trips. This was also Lesley's first time speaking with me at a church service and it was really encouraging to me to have her up there beside me. I'm so thankful for her! This was such a rejuvenating time for us to connect with the staff members and the congregation.  The staff and members also took time to pray for us and "send us out" during the service which was really awesome to experience!  We also had some of our very close friends pray with them, as they also invited those in the service who knew us personally to come forward, who have watched this calling unfold in our lives over the past few years.  It meant so much to us to have them be there and pray over us.  We love our church family so much and thank them for all of the encouragement and discipleship during our time at Tech.


Jamey